Qingyun Ma

Qingyun Ma was named dean of the USC School of Architecture and holder of USC’s Della and Harry MacDonald Dean’s Chair in Architecture effective January 2007.

After practicing architecture with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in New York City, Ma founded the Shanghai architectural firm MADA s.p.a.m. (for strategy, planning, architecture and media) in 1996, creating award-winning projects such as the Longyang Residential complex in Shanghai and the Silk Tower in Xian.

Ma also coordinated Rem Koolhaas’s first Harvard Project on Cities, which yielded the 1993 book The Great Leap Forward. The two collaborated on the Central China TV headquarters in Beijing and the Stock Exchange Building in Shenzhen as well.

Ma?s other buildings include Qingpu Community Island in Shanghai, Centennial TV and Radio Center in Xian and Tianyi City Plaza in Ningpo. His work has been exhibited around the world, and his honors include a Design Vanguard award from Architectural Record, Phaidon’s Emerging Design Talents designation and a New Trends of Architecture designation by the Euro-Asia Foundation.

Ma has served as a visiting professor and critic at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University as well as at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland; Berlage Institute in the Netherlands; Universität Karlsruhe and Berlin Technical University in Germany; and the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris.

Ma earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in architecture from Tsinghua University in 1988 and holds a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts, where he also won the Frank Miles Day Memorial Prize.